


For you, Eren

by risidi



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - College/University, College Student Eren Yeager, College Student Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Modern Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan, Sad Ending, so much fluff omg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 02:25:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18983305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/risidi/pseuds/risidi
Summary: Levi reminisces about his favorite memories with Eren, how they fell in love, and how much of a dork the love of his life is-was.





	For you, Eren

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, I wrote this so long ago when I was feeling super emo and I figured I might as well upload it so the rest of you can feel my pain.

It’s been two years now, but it feels much longer than that. Time has done nothing but rub my loneliness in my face. I dream of your face even when I am awake, is it selfish for me to wish for your reincarnation to put your soul on this barren earth? It’s dark even when the sun shines, but this sun isn’t my sun. This is an impostor called last minute, you were my sun. I wonder if you are cold too.

I went to our old coffee shop for the first time alone today. I went in ready to order a latte, but then changed my order to plain black. The bitterness of it reminded me of the first time I met you. Clear as day, I see you walk up to me all cheeky smile, torso wrapped in a hunter green Henley, my coffee in hand. Or so I assumed because you weren’t wearing a name tag and were looking at me like I paid off all your student loans, asking me if I wanted to take a survey. 

I almost reach out and see if you’re real, but I know by the bags under my eyes that stare at me in my reflection that you’re not. I should’ve said no and taken my latte; a cheeky smile has never taken my anywhere worth while until you. I wish I could say that the rest is history, but that is a phrase used only for happy endings. We almost had one. You handed me my latte and you asked if I could try it right there because you were “new to the latte thing.” I took a small sip and almost spit it all over your hunter green Henley, it was the worst latte I’d ever had.

I opened the lid to see black coffee and there was a knowing smile growing in your face. I realized you probably had a cheesy pickup line and I almost wanted to humor you, but that smile was too precious to be meant for me. I asked if you even worked there and you admitted that you dropped your name tag in a cup of coffee this morning. A few bad jokes later, you admitted that it was my latte that you dropped it in. 

I’m freezing even in two of your sweaters and you bunny slippers. My heart aches. I drove to the cemetery and put three of my favorite blankets on your grave and sat with you. I didn’t want you to be cold and I didn’t want to be alone anymore. 

You tell me your name is Eren and I laugh because it’s so pretty and you’re so pretty and smiling couldn’t do my happiness justice. I couldn’t believe you were talking to me, you leaned in like you were going to tell me the world’s biggest secret only to whisper that my eyes remind you of a “raging snowstorm, I didn’t know that color of blue could be put into eyes.” Then you lean back with a grin and say you’ve been waiting weeks to tell me that. 

The look on my face must’ve told you that isn’t something you usually tell people you’ve never met, “You’ve been here everyday for the past month and I just think the word beautiful wouldn’t do you justice” You were scared to talk to me until you thought of the perfect line, that was the first time I actually felt my heartbeat. I took a big gulp of the coffee and for the first time, I embraced the strong flavor. I knew from then on, anything bitter would remind me of you.

I learned quickly that you spoke with the excitement and tact of a five-year-old. You didn’t think before you spoke, so all I received was pure, unadulterated Eren. People like you were so rare; how did you find me beautiful? You were such a nerd and I couldn’t help but feel honored to see your smile. I wanted to be the cause of that smile. After that day, we started meeting at the bookshop on the corner which was my favorite, and I guess yours too. The world through your eyes was colorful and mine was grey, I often found myself wondering if your sight was contagious. Your smile was engraved in my mind and it slowly became the reason I woke up on the hard days.

I was a mess when you were here, what am I now? I couldn’t tell you; I don’t even feel like I’m existing anymore. Why am I still here, why aren’t you? Where are you?  
The first time you saw the bruises, you were livid. Your eyebrows were furrowed, and I swear your eyes were black, but I wasn’t scared of your anger, not even a little bit. You told me you couldn’t believe anyone would want to hit me, didn’t know how someone could even feel anything besides affection towards me. I was a deity to you. You told me you were sorry again and again instead of saying that you were going to fix everything because we both knew you couldn’t. 

I rushed forward and hugged you, we almost toppled backwards. The surprised look you had is forever etched into my memory. Displays of affection never came easily to me, but when I was with you, I had never wanted it more. I tried to hide the bruises after that and if you ever saw them, you never let on. Thank you.  
We talked about life and how messed up everything was, and I swore I was living in a teen romance novel, I caught myself thinking that maybe being in love isn’t cliché at all. The possibility of something being too good to be true never crossed my mind. One morning I woke up and cried because I saw a rainbow outside my window in full color and I know only you were to blame. 

You were in school to be a history professor because you thought there was something so comforting about reading about the people who got us here fucking up. You’d say that it was human nature to make mistakes and sometimes those mistakes will take you somewhere incredible. I came to learn that whenever you would mess up, you would turn to your history books. I swear you always had a copy with you, my beautiful nerd.

I remember when we got into our first and only fight, I stormed out because I was scared of being too clingy. My insecurities rose and I couldn’t ignore them anymore, I took out my anger at myself on you. I found you huddled under the birch tree in the park reading a textbook with teary eyes. You always walked around with your heart on your sleeve and that was the first time a piece of my heart cracked. I took the broken piece and put it in a box in the back of my closet for you to have when I had nothing left to give you. 

I apologized everyday since world were all I knew, turns out your biggest fear was being alone. You wanted to change the lives of everyone around you and I wholeheartedly believed you could. Eren, you could’ve walked up to me and said the sun revolves around you and I would’ve believed you.

I told you I was going to be a neurosurgeon and open my own hospital in memory of my sister. They couldn’t save her, but somehow, I knew I could’ve. She fought too much, and her brain was her battleground. Is a one-sided war still a war? You told me I could save anyone if I wanted because I was a fighter too and I had too much to lose. 

When you asked me to move in with you, the thought of refusing never once crossed my mind. I had been yours since you dropped your nametag in my coffee. I was so deliriously happy to live with my radiant sunrise of a boy that I forgot I wasn’t a morning person. I would’ve been anyone you wanted me to be, but I loved you even more when you just wanted me to be me. 

The first time I told you I loved you, I thought your face was going to split in half from your smile. I could never get sick of that smile, especially when I was the cause. The rest of the night you repeated it back to me like they were the only words you knew. We never got into huge fights because we both agreed that whatever it was, it wasn’t as important as we were to each other. 

I didn’t know a person could mean so much, my love for you never grew cold, never simmered down. It only seemed to expand, even in the coldest storm I never had a chance to shiver. I didn’t know how you had wormed your way into my heart, but I never planned on kicking you out. You told me I was your world and you would never, could never leave. I believed you. 

It was Halloween and you suggested that we to go to a party with your friends, I insisted you go alone. I was dead tired from my exams and Halloween was the anniversary of my sister’s passing, but you knew that. You wanted to stay home with me, begged to stay with me, but I kept telling you to go. I couldn’t cry until you left, you hated it when I cried looking at me like I was the most broken thing you’ve ever seen, I told you I loved you, but you couldn’t fix this part of me. 

You kissed my forehead and told me you weren’t a carpenter; you were a blacksmith. A blacksmith who always lost their right show, we had to look for over forty-five minutes the whole time you were quoting this poem about Gerber daises. You were such a nerd. You found it in the bathtub the next day. I don’t know why you gave me a huge hug before you left and said you’d be home before midnight. You hated driving alone in the dark. I put in a Disney movie and called it a night. 

I got the call at 11:30 and I remember it like it was just yesterday, the pain still fresh in my mind and my heart. I ran to the hospital in your bunny slippers, it was just five blocks from our apartment, but it felt like I was running for an eternity. I wish I had been; I reached the hospital too soon. I didn’t want the news, my heart was in my throat like if I coughed, I could lose it, maybe I should’ve tried. 

Your car was hit by a drunk driver just six blocks from our apartment, you were fighting for your life and I was sleeping. There was so much internal bleeding and your cuts wouldn’t stay shut, even unconscious your body fought the transfusion tooth and nail. You were always too stubborn for your own good. I wanted to desperately to see you, but I didn’t quality as family, so I had to wait and wait as my heart crumbled in my chest. I knew I was never going to see you again. They told me you fought and fought and that’s why I’m alone in this cold room, I almost smiled because that is so like you it hurts. 

Your family never showed up. 

My first night alone in our apartment I realized how strong your cologne was, I thought I was suffocating. My dreams of your smile turned into nightmares of you slipping away from me again and again and again. So close yet so far away. I had been so hopelessly in love with you that I forgot what it felt like to hurt like this, to be broken like this. 

I tell myself that time will dull the pain, at least enough to get through school. The schoolwork became my outlet, I didn’t let myself cry and scream and hate the world like I wanted. I wrote papers and did extra clinical hours, I worked myself to the bone. If I was working, I was distracted, and I needed to be distracted.  
I graduated top of my class and opened my own children’s hospital, my own safe haven. I put what was left of my heart and soul into my work. I worked overtime every day and sometimes stayed the night. I made sure to meet every child personally. My heart started getting fuller and fuller, now belonging to the hundreds of children here. 

I store history textbooks in my desk, and I pull one out and read about the rebuilding of a fallen empire whenever I feel like my empire was falling. Nobody asks why. Now, here I am in our old coffee shop realizing that life goes on even if you don’t want it to. I look to the left and see a college student studying for a history exam.

I think of you.


End file.
